Recently, the consumer preference for natural wood has been highly increased, and at the same time, concerns about environmental disruption according to increase in carbon dioxide due to lumbering of natural wood have been raised significantly. Therefore, demands for development of substitute for natural wood have been increased. Particularly, building materials field which has a great demand for a natural wood are those.
Under these circumstances, many studies on composite with similar texture and appearance to natural wood have been conducted recently.
Therefore, composite which contains wood in small amount or non-wood has been suggested. For example, such composite is divided into the plywood which is manufactured by slicing material lumber into thin pieces, coloring and drying one or both sides of each piece, attaching a film with adhesive, drying it, and cutting it into pieces with a fixed length; and MDF (Medium Density Fiber wood) which is manufactured by grinding material lumber or waste lumber, adding a large amount of resin and hot-pressing the mixture. MDF can be processed and used for each purpose by attaching natural or vinyl sliced veneers to MDF.
But, due to harmful materials included in its adhesives, these composite woods give harmful effect to human body and contaminate environment. Especially formaldehyde contained in adhesives can cause cancer. Further, MDF cause problems such as a swell and shrinkage between sliced veneer and boards, and separation, crack or decomposition of sliced veneer attached due to influence of outside moisture.
Korean laid-open Publication No. 2006-0057740 (May 29, 2006) discloses a method of obtaining plant fibers from by-products such as rice straw, wheat straw, barley straw, cornstalk, leaves of corn, and waste herbaceous plants such as reed. The method includes collecting and grinding by-products and waste herbaceous plants, centrifugally separating, and collecting plant fibers by adding water into centrifugally separated waste herbaceous plants. The plant fibers obtained by the conventional method can be used for containers, agricultural ports and subsidiary building materials. However, they might have lower durability and strength and can be easily bent or stretched since they are made only from plant fibers.
Therefore, studies on composite made from non-wood while having excellent bending and stretching resistance, higher strength and no change in color from sunlight are required.